


Where You Find Them

by louderandlouder



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Grieving, fashion droid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 19:11:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5713876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louderandlouder/pseuds/louderandlouder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Rey got her new clothes, and a careful dive into the mind of Leia Organa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where You Find Them

Rey figured that the Resistance didn't throw many parties. But today, having set their enemies back a year or two, they went running for beer and wine, and for instruments and music droids, and in general for such a surfeit of pleasures that even now, an hour later, they still were not spent. There was a dented cooler of bottles. There were spiral fruits lain untidily on a table. There was a bonfire. And there was dancing, in the cold clean air that smelled to her like the old air-freshener pods she'd found in the cockpits of crashed X-Wings, along with mummified bodies whose scent they no longer masked. She hadn't got used yet to seeing all these real pilots in orange coveralls, living women and men.

She hadn't known what to do at first. All the people she knew had vanished into the crowd or the building: Chewbacca, BB-8, Finn still tenderly sleeping, and even the woman, the general, who had hugged her tightly and who she somehow knew had loved Han – and Rey had wanted to talk to her, but she had been snatched away by people who wanted to tell her everything, and then she was gone.

So Rey had stood there, letting the crowd flow around her. Then an X-Wing pilot with braids had turned to her and started to babble good-humoredly of what she'd seen and what she'd lost, and she'd told the pilot about blowing up the base, and then she'd been roped into helping carry the cooler, and after that they'd all danced awhile. But now it was night and she was shaking. Jakku at night was still hot, and on Starkiller Base she had been too full of adrenaline to care. Now it was dew-cold and she was in desert gauze, and even the fire didn't help.

So she went inside. The central building was almost deserted, sallow lights at stations and around a big holographic display. A few ponytailed women sat by monitors, toying with half-full glasses of wine.

“Rey.” The clicking of boots, the swish of fabric. Rey turned around. She was tiny, the general – a meter five, maybe? -- and Rey did not know how she had seemed so tall outside, with her crown of brown and white hair, touching bigger men's arms as they spoke, or raising her strong voice to ask for someone to come to her.

“Hello,” said Rey awkwardly. “We met but you haven't told me your name.”

“Leia Organa,” said the general. “Are you cold?”

“Yes.”

“Come upstairs and I'll find you something.”

She led Rey along a dark corridor and unlocked a door. The room behind it was windowless, and felt recently claimed and soon to be abandoned – a cot, a lantern, and a few things too lovely to really assimilate. A purple embroidered sheet thrown over the bed; a chest of aged chromine and some kind of wood; a shelf of clothes over which the General lingered, searching for something, thumbing down through the piles, then up again.

“Anything will do,” said Rey.

Organa handed her a jacket, made of a soft fabric with a nap like a rat's coat, in a color the room was too dim to show, and said, “Sit with me for a moment. I can't go back to the party yet.”

“Why would you feel like celebrating?”

“Seven people – seven! -- have told me tonight that Han was a great man.” Organa sat down at the edge of the bed and switched on a vent, then took a thin white pipe from the bedside table and said, “Do you mind?”

“No,” said Rey. Organa lit a plug of tobacco, drew in smoke, exhaled it towards the vent, which sucked it away like a hungry thing.

“Han _hated_ this,” she said, with a certain bleak pleasure. “ _Hated_.”

“Why?”

“He hated the smell. Hated what it did to my voice.” Organa stared down contemplatively at the glow of the fire, her fine eyes shadowed. “He wasn't a great man, and anyone who knew him knew that. I'm not sure he was even good. I knew where he stood on _nice_.”

“He was very kind to me,” said Rey, and the thought of it made her eyes smart. “In the time I had with him.”

“Only a day or two, he told me.”

“That's true, but I felt that we were already friends. I don't know why.”

“Oh, he wasn't complicated, dear.” Organa touched her eyelid with the tip of her finger. “You met him, you knew him. Brave. Sharp. Beautiful. Quick to care about people. A blusterer – well, a bullshitter.” In her voice, the ghost of a girl who had not been raised to swear; in her eyes, a certain slyness. “He liked you enormously.”

“He offered me a job. He said I appreciated the _Falcon_.”

“I see,” said the General, and inhaled and blew another round of smoke into the vent. “There were two ways into the grimiest recesses of Han Solo's heart, Rey. One of them was to fight with him and alongside him and call him names for _years_ and the other was to appreciate the _Falcon_.”

“This is going to sound stupid,” said Rey, “but I saw him like a father. I did. My parents left me when I was little and I've never had anyone, I never meet anyone.” And the tears came to her eyes for good, and were spent into her sleeve, and General Organa held her pipe in one hand and Rey's hand in the other.

“It doesn't sound stupid, Rey. This galaxy is a big place, beautiful from a distance and often very ugly close up, and if there's anything I've learned, it's that you need to take your family where you find them.”

“Thank you, General.”

“Leia,” said Leia, as if affronted.

“You shouldn't be comforting me. You lost your husband today.”

“Han was my very much ex-husband,” said Leia, and gasped a laugh that was half sob. “And anyway, the day my parents died, I was all caught up in making Luke feel better. It's just the way I am.”

“Luke?”

“Luke Skywalker is my brother, Rey.” She said it gently, as if filling someone in who really ought to have guessed already.

“Oh,” said Rey blankly, and it all spread out in her head, Han and Leia, Luke, student, son, nephew – the locus of this little knot was the man she had fought today. It made sense and it didn't, because Han and Leia were kind and they were very lonely, and she could not reconcile them at all with the people they were supposed to be, or with the parents of the tall white-faced boy who in his head still called himself -- “Ben.”

“He was named for Luke's first teacher.” Leia had lowered her pipe and her eyelids, and was leaning forward, looking at nothing. “A man I never met. But the man who brought us all together. Han barely knew him, didn't like him, but there was a time when he would've done more than that to make Luke smile. Excuse me.”

Rey brought out her bandanna, but dirt- and oil-stained as it was, it didn't seem suitable to hand to a woman like this. Leia seized it, though, and blew her nose hard. “Thank you.”

“I can't imagine how you must feel.”

“Yes, you can. You said it yourself – Han was a father to you. You don't have to know your father for long for him to make an impression. I've only met mine twice.”

“Ben said he would've disappointed me.”

“Did you believe him?”

“I don't know. He won't ever now.”

“Han was the one who wanted a child,” said Leia. “I was afraid of – you see, Rey, my father, not the one who raised me but the one who made me, was a monster. Han said evil isn't hereditary, and he so badly wanted a son. And what did he get? He should have listened to me. He never _listened_ to me!”

“But he's right. It isn't.”

“Oh, he was right,” said Leia. “It isn't. Not that kind of evil. But what my baby has become is another kind entirely.”

In the silence, she blew her nose again, and then she went on.

“There's a kind of evil that intends good. That's the kind that's tempted me all my life. And there's a kind that's afraid of good, that denies itself and lies to itself, and kills the goodness in it with as much struggle as it took for Ben to kill his father. It dies hard, that goodness. Han didn't die until he hit the ground. I know something of the Force, Rey. I felt the rush of air through the hole in his heart. He should have listened to me.”

Rey couldn't speak. She looked down at her hands in her lap, in Leia's gorgeous sleeves, and wished she could be back outside again, in the thin uncomplicated air.

“But I can't wish I hadn't asked him to try to save him,” said Leia in a flat voice. “And I can't wish – that Ben hadn't been born. Though I would like to. We were so happy when he was little.”

“I wish there were something I could do.”

“There is,” said Leia, and smiled faintly and with effort. “You can be happy yourself, for as long as you can. Is there someone you like? I saw how you looked at Finn.”

“I don't know. Does that mean something?”

“Maybe.”

“Finn understands me,” said Rey. “I look at his face when he's happy and it's like looking at my own. He lied about where he came from, and I wish he hadn't done that, I wish he'd felt like he could trust me not to hate him.”

“How did you find out?”

“He told me.”

“So he stopped lying, hm. That's braver than never starting.” Leia stirred, let go of Rey's hand. “Let me find you some other clothes.”

“I'm warm enough now.”

“You'll need things to train with Luke. That planet looked like a chilly rock. Look.” She got up and knelt before the chest, sprung the lock. “I'll give you some of my princess stuff.”

“Your princess stuff?” Rey turned around on the bed, hitched up her legs.

“Clothes from Alderaan.” Leia lifted up something pale blue from the chest, spread it on the bed, almost reverently. A dress with a crisp white collar, wrinkled but fine. “My home.”

“Princess?”

“Yes,” said Leia with faint frustration. “I was a princess once.”

“That's amazing.”

“Well, the place ain't there no more, as Han would have said.” Another dress, of badly crumpled white material, the shape of it almost unrecognizable. “The first planet to fall prey to the Death Star. The last one, too, thanks to Luke. This would look pretty.” Leia handed her a gray wool dress with padded shoulders. “It's not really your style, but RD-0 in the pilots' shop can rig up a X-Wing flightsuit in any size, and I guess it would be easy to alter. Give it a try.”

Rey got off of the bed and tried dutifully to shrug the dress on over her clothes. It had tricky buttons, and it was startling to wear something so free around her legs and so constricting on top, but she had to admit that it made her look different, rich and strong and deep in the eyes.

“You can chop off the sleeves, too,” said Leia, behind her in the mirror.

“I don't want to ruin your things.”

“I've been dragging this chest around the galaxy for thirty years just because it reminds me of home, but my home is gone, and it's never coming back.” Leia gripped Rey's shoulders tightly, then let go. “It's time for someone else to have this.”

“Leia?”

“Yes?”

“What sort of person is Luke?”

“He's – strange.” Leia sat down softly at the edge of the bed. “I'm not good at describing people. When we were young he was impetuous and confused. Silly, loud. But he changed. Took in a lot of darkness. He feels responsible for people, Rey. That's the good in him.”

“So he's like you.”

“Not much like me. But he broke in some of the same ways, and that's how you know he's family.”

“You said you know something about the Force?”

“I do.”

“Did he train you?”

“Never.”

“Why not?”

“At first I didn't take it seriously enough,” said Leia. “And then I was busy. I was a mother and a soldier. And the Jedi are – different. When they go bad, they go _really_ bad. And there's so much anger in me.”

“You don't seem angry. Angrier than anyone else would be, I mean.”

“I'm a mother and a soldier,” said Leia again. “I have enough anger for anybody. Sometimes the injustice of it all still hits me and I'm paralyzed. I can't think, only act.”

“I felt like that today,” said Rey. “When I saw Han get killed. And when I was fighting Ben, when I pushed him down, when I almost won. I wanted him to _die_. I wanted to murder him.”

“What stopped you?” asked Leia, and the emotion had drained from her voice.

“Pity,” said Rey, with shame. “I felt so sorry for him. And then the chance passed.”

“You're so like Luke. _Talk_ to him. That was Ben's mistake. He never trusted Luke, never trusted him to know the dark or show him the way through. But Luke knows the dark better than anyone. He's not like me. He knows how to keep his feelings at bay.”

“There's nothing wrong with you,” said Rey.

“Please don't say that to me,” said Leia, and she said it with iron authority that made Rey step back. She felt it then, a ripple of – not anger, but _sorrow_ , hard as a physical thing in the air.

“Why?”

“Because you have no idea what you're talking about yet,” said Leia.

“I have _some_ idea,” said Rey. “I'm not a baby. I grew up scavenging Star Destroyers for parts and you grew up in a castle.”

“I grew up in the Rebellion.”

“And I came to it on purpose.”

“You came to it asking for my help,” said Leia, “like everyone else does.”

Her shoulders were slack; she looked sick. Rey stepped towards her again, but Leia waved her away and said, “Enough visiting for tonight. Don't forget your dress.”

“I really don't need the dress--”

“Take it,” said Leia, and took her arm and pushed her firmly from the room.

*

The party seemed impossible now, so she threaded past it to sleep in the empty _Falcon_. But the covers in the bunk were cold and sandy and the noise from outside was violent, so she got up. She thought of trying yet again to return the damn dress, but realized when she got outside that this was foolish. So she wandered around the empty parts of the base until she found the pilots' shop, a big shed filled with bolts of orange fabric and various small parts on nearly labeled shelves, and also with the droid RD-0, who had a thousand wiry silver arms and a hard, doglike head with a cyclopean camera for an eye. It was sitting in the dark, whirring fabric through a machine, and Rey stopped at the door.

“Hello-hello,” said the droid, which had a contralto voice with a mechanical tang. Its – her – natural monotone was crudely modulated, Rey thought with some sort of phase vocoder. “Is that some-thing for me?”

“If you have time. General Organa wants it done. I didn't come here looking for you, I just --”

“I see you have had a day,” said RD-0, though there was still no light on in the shed; only the high dirty windows and the brilliancy of her finish made her visible at all. “Maybe you have fought and won some-thing.”

“I fought and lost something.”

“And now you can-not sleep.”

“No.”

“I do not sleep,” said RD-0. The electronic noise of her voice was most audible on the long ee sounds. Rey thought she might have taken a ding to the throat which messed up her acoustics. “And I don't enjoy the parties. Give me that. I will be glad to see some-thing that isn't or-ange. Sit.”

Rey gave her the dress and sat down in a folding chair at the foot of RD-0's table. The droid flicked on a little light and began to examine the stitching.

“You don't need to do that just to make me feel better,” said Rey. “I know you can see it anyway.”

“My loupe is old,” said RD-0, but turned off the light. “She wants this – what?”

“Made into clothes for me.”

“She acts always with de-ter-min-a-tion,” said RD-0. “I would like a con-tras-ting layer. Stand and show me your clo-thing.”

Rey tugged off Leia's coat and twirled awkwardly in the dark.

“Fit and style an-al-y-sis com-plete,” said RD-0, and snatched the dress away. She began working on it with several arms at once, ripping seams, picking off buttons, a rapid flap of fabric. “Style re-quests?”

“Just clothes. I need warmer clothes, apparently.”

“You sound angry.”

“I don't want to talk about clothes anymore.”

“What would you like to talk about?”

“Nothing,” said Rey, and felt her eyes wet again. RD-0 extended one of her longer arms; speared on its end was a handkerchief. Rey took it and sat in silence for a while, watching the droid twirl and whirr and pluck at the fabric, lift down bolts, size, compare, mark things with a little pencil.

“What did you do in the bat-tle? Are you a pi-lot?”

“No. Yes, I'm a pilot. But I was on the base with Han.”

RD-0 went entirely still for a moment, except for the quivering aftershocks of her wiry fingers. Then she was working again. “I knew Cap-tain So-lo well. I made the pants for him. He liked the stripe.”

“I almost killed somebody today.”

“I have killed,” said RD-0, as reflectively as you could in monotone. “Yes, I have killed.”

“When?”

“I am a sew-ing and al-ter-a-tion unit. But that does not mean I lack con-vic-tions. The First Order feels strong-ly about tai-lor-ing.”

“They always look so uncomfortable all the time.”

“In-deed. Their col-lars choke them. The storm-troo-pers' ar-mor chafes the neck. Of-ten they would come to me for creams.”

“You do creams too?”

“I do some me-di-cine. I stitch flesh, too. Their care is poor. A seam rip-per can tear an ar-te-ry. The troo-pers re-vol-ted and were put down by a gas. The Re-sist-ance picked me up much la-ter.”

“My friend was a stormtrooper.”

“Then he was treat-ed very bad-ly,” said RD-0. “Did he re-volt?”

“He ran away. Do they often revolt?”

“Yes,” said RD-0, “but this is kept qui-et. Do you like the top?” A white shirt dangled on wires before Rey's eyes.

“The neck looks a bit low.”

“It is in-spired by Cap-tain So-lo,” said RD-0, and snatched the shirt away so quickly that it looked like a ghost. “In his young-er years he en-joyed to show the chest. But I will raise it.”

“How long did you work for the First Order?”

“I was owned by the First Order since their start. But I was made sixty-seven-point-seven stand-ard un-its ago on Al-der-aan.”

“Did you know Leia before?”

“Not ev-ery-one on Al-der-aan knew each oth-er. But she was glad to see me. I am the only sew-ing and al-ter-a-tion unit of my type left.”

“How do you know?”

RD-0 went still again, and then snapped back to life. “I am always in comm-un-i-ca-tion.”

“You talk? With other RD-units?”

“I talked. We were meant to share the in-for-ma-tion. All the trends. RD-7 was parted out on Co-ru-scant eleven stand-ard un-its ago. She was the last.”

“RD-0, what's a standard unit?”

“Time of com-plete fash-ion cy-cle,” said RD-0.

“Were you the prototype, then?”

“Yes. Do you like the trou-sers?” Again, the flash and dangle of clothing.

“They're good.”

“What is 'good trou-sers' to you?”

“They keep the weather out.”

“Trou-sers: good,” said RD-0. “A jack-et will be made of the Gen-er-al's dress. Would you like to talk about any-thing else?”

“Would you?”

“I like to talk about my-self,” said RD-0, and resumed her whirring.

“Are you lonely here? Do you have friends?”

“I like the Gen-er-al. She talks to me of her mar-riage trou-bles. And Cap-tain So-lo would yell to me of his.”

“What about other droids?”

“There are not many droids of my type here,” said RD-0. “The pro-to-col droid of the Gen-er-al, C-3P0, he is too self-ab-sorbed. The astro-mechs look down on fash-ion. Except BB-8.”

“Everyone likes BB-8.”

“She is cute like a bug,” pronounced RD-0, and held out the jacket, a thing so fine that it made Rey involuntarily stand up and say, “For me?”

“For you,” RD-0 confirmed, and two more pincers held up a pair of detached sleeves to either side.

Rey took the jacket, put it on, looked at herself in a mirror RD-0 had produced from behind her little counter. She didn't look like someone else anymore; she looked like herself, but calmer, tougher, someone who knew her choices were right. Someone certain of her way. It was a lie, but it felt like a truth, and an important one.

“Fash-ion,” RD-0 added a good deal of vibrato for emphasis.

“I don't know what to say.”

“You have said all with your look and in-flec-tion. Take, take the top and the trou-sers. You will look like them both.”

“The top and the trousers?” asked Rey, who had not slept since Jakku, unless passing out counted.

“The gen-er-al and the cap-tain,” said RD-0, expressionlessly. “Do you see what I, RD-0, have done?”

“Not really.”

“It is sub-tle-ty, it is fash-ion. Change. Your flesh is no-thing to me.”

Rey changed, found that the clothes were comfortable and empty of sand. Impulsively she grasped a handful of RD-0's wires, found them very warm to the touch, and sharp.

“Thank you.”

“Do not be a strang-er.”

“I have to go soon – far away. Tomorrow. But I'll be back.”

“Good,” said RD-0. “To talk to the gen-er-al about the cap-tain will be very hard.”

*

She slept, woke early, got into her new clothes, and ran full of energy into the base, Leia's coat in her arms. When Leia's door opened she had to dodge it, deftly, in order to present the coat.

“You look like a million credits,” said Leia, taking it. “Something I don't think the Resistance will ever see again. RD-0 fixed you up, then?”

“She's incredible.”

“She is.”

Leia was wearing – a _gown_ , Rey wanted to say, earrings, hair done up in something that looked like a fancy cushion, but in an expensive way.

“Fash-ion,” said Leia, and they both smiled, more easily than Rey could have imagined they would after last night. “A lot more people are waiting out there to tell me what they thought about Han. He wouldn't want me to go out looking like shit.”

“I'll tell Luke what happened to him.”

Leia folded Rey's arm in hers and led her down the hall. “Rey, I am sorry. I was lousy to you last night.”

“It's all right,” said Rey. “Like I said, nobody's ever been _anything_ to me before.”

Leia's fine eyebrow rose. “That will change, Rey. You have charisma. Please do tell Luke about Han. And tell him his sister loves him and wants him to come home. Tell him I don't have a lot of family members left. And tell him I know he'll train you well. Don't forget to say that I know.”

“Look,” said Rey hurriedly, because they were almost to the public part of the base. “--No. Never mind.”

“Were you going to say that he failed with my son?”

“No. Maybe.”

“My son failed himself,” said Leia. “And he was hurt. But not by Luke. Luke would never fail someone he loved. And he will love you, because you have that _charisma_. Remember that, too.” 

“I will.”

“Are you ready to go?”

“I want to say goodbye to Finn. If I can.”

“Certainly,” said Leia. “Come out when you're ready.” And she smiled, and touched Rey's shoulder with the elegant new padding, and blinked and grimaced as if she would weep again, and was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> More emotive characters than they are on the screen, but I figure there's a time to fight and a time to mourn.
> 
> My headcanon is that Rey really is unrelated to any of these people -- I'm very drawn to the idea that both Han and Leia choose her as family in the film. It strikes me that both of them are brave to reach out to her, after all the pain their family has given them. Through Rey, they are able to join hands a final time, by each holding one of hers.
> 
>  
> 
> (If any "Body" commenters are reading this -- hello, I'm still alive, still trying to publish my originals! Sorry my years-later followup to my giant fic is a small, casual piece like this. I hadn't intended to do anything on the AO3 again, but then TFA happened and I had to write it.)


End file.
